Valuing all kids

Building on Strengths Department
A lot of people talk about how schools should build on kids’ “multiple intelligences” but not as many really do it. So I have to tell you about a recent class my daughter taught.
She works in a program that teaches art/creative expression in some of the “worst” schools in Oakland. Last week in an after-school class of first- and second-graders, the kids made “storyboards,” a series of drawings telling a simple story of a problem that was solved by a family with "superpowers." Then the kids wrote words for the power the family had used to solve the problem. For example, one of the stories showed a homeless person who was cold, so the family built him a fire. The kids wrote “power of fire.” The superpower in another story was the “power of cheer-up.” :)
Meanwhile there were a couple of kids, as there often are, who couldn’t sit still to work on the project and hadn’t yet gotten into this writing thing. So they wandering off making up dances to a current popular song, chanting “lean with it, rock with it, lean with it, rock with it.”
“Can you dance about the superpowers?” my daughter asked. “Here’s a story about the power of fire.”
So the dancers went to the first group, danced, and chanted “Lean with the power of fire, rock with the power of fire.”
Then, my daughter said, all the kids were clamoring for the dancers to dance for their story, so they danced for each one in turn: “Lean with the power of cheer-up, rock with the power of cheer-up.” Etc.
From being marginal and uninvolved, the dancers had turned into valued contributors.
Obviously it can’t end there. They will have to learn how to write! But it will be easier if they feel like valued members of the group. This was a start.

CalWORKs changes: More pressure

More Trouble Department
The new federal welfare law, signed last February, will put a lot more pressure on states, and thus on low-income families, who already had plenty, thank you.
The new law forces states to get more of the people on welfare working. It also puts more restrictions on what you can count as “work” (for example, you can count a year’s worth of job training, but the new law specifies that this “training” can’t be part of a four-year college program).
If you’re interested in the technical details, the feds didn’t actually increase the “work participation” requirement: it’s still 50%. What they did was drastically decrease the credit that states get for reducing the number of families on welfare. The states were using this credit to make up for the fact that nowhere NEAR 50% of the families on welfare were working. In California it’s been around 23%.
(That’s because families on welfare have REASONS for not working. Some parents lack job skills. Some are homeless. Some can’t find child care or transportation. Many have mental health, domestic violence, or substance abuse problems. That’s why they’re on welfare. Duh.)
(If you want even more technical details about the federal changes and California’s response, see the summary by the Western Center on Law and Poverty at http://www.wclp.org/files/Welfare%20Watchers%207-21-06%20final.doc )
California has responded to this pressure in a good way, by trying to protect supportive programs for CalWORKs families and even providing more funds for programs such as job training, that will help parents meet work requirements. They’re also moving some families out of the federal welfare program so they won’t be under pressure to work if that’s not appropriate for them. They’ve added policies to help families avoid “sanctions” (penalties for not meeting CalWORKs requirements) and to end sanctions quickly.
But the federal law will still increase pressure and restrict options for CalWORKs and CalWORKs families.
Fortunately California also has some kick-ass organizations that are mobilizing to help CalWORKs parents learn about the new law and figure out how to deal with it, both on an individual and a policy level.
LIFETIME (Low-Income Families Empowerment Through Education) (http://www.geds-to-phds.org/) will be working with other organizations in the TANF Stakeholders Working Group to prevent any cuts in income to CalWORKs families. They’ll also continue to work on expanding educational opportunities for CalWORKs parents.
Meanwhile LIFETIME staffer Dianna Collier will be traveling around the state holding workshops for parents on CalWORKS about how they can deal with the new requirements and build toward financial success for their families. To schedule a workshop at your community college or organization, contact her at dcollier@geds-to-phds.org.
And look for the Children’s Advocate’s article on new issues in CalWORKs, coming up in our March issue.

Shortchanging Head Start Kids

What are they thinking?! Department

The US Dept of Health and Human Services is telling Head Start to cut wages, cut teacher health care, and ask businesses for extra money because of budget cuts, says the National Head Start Association.

NHSA calls the requirements "unrealistic" and "an insult" ... and only marginally effective at reducing costs because previous budget cuts have left most programs with only the bare necessities.

NHSA President and CEO Greene said: "It is a shame to see that those responsible for educating America's most at-risk children are being asked to make the kind of personal financial sacrifices that would never be asked of a worker for a Defense Department contractor. Many Head Start staff workers are women who are trying to lift themselves up out of poverty and these crippling cuts often make it impossible for them to turn around their lives and those of their families …. "(I)t is naive for ACF to think that one-time donations to individual programs from local business will staunch years of programmatic bleeding or be sufficient to replace the lost operational funds.”

The NHSA also warns that the funding situation will get worse if the proposed 2007 budget for Head Start is passed – which would provide an additional $.06 per child per week.

Get involved on this issue:
Save Head Start
http://www.saveheadstart.org/

Eco-friendly preschool

This is cool! Department

A new Pasadena preschool will be the first green-certified preschool in CA, says an article in the Whittier Daily News. The Mother's Club learning center is gutting an existing building, reusing construction materials, and plans to tile the front of the building with solar panels. The program sounds pretty cool, too -- care for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers during the day; literacy, health, and ECE classes at night.

Read more:
New preschool will be Earth-friendly
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_4549840

Stricter rules for babies of undocumented immigrants

What are they thinking?! Department

A new federal policy means that children born in the US to undocumented immigrants will no longer automatically qualify for health insurance, reports the New York Times. Before, women got emergency care under Medicaid and their babies were covered for their first year.

Now, families will have to apply to Medicaid and prove that their baby is a citizen (even proponents of the new policy say this part is obvious) before the child can get health coverage -- despite all the obstacles this poses for families, such as language barriers, fear of deportation, and finding time to deal with all this with a new baby!

Marilyn E. Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Medicaid program, said she’s been told all states will have to change their policies accordingly.

Read more:
U.S. Tightens Medicaid Rules for Babies of Illegal Immigrants http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/02/washington/02cnd-medicaid.html?
_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1162925636-FNGnxBn/Bh7mpW/QZJEBhg

From the CA Immigrant Welfare Collaborative:
Access to Medicaid for Newborns of Immigrant Mothers
http://www.caimmigrant.org/source/Newborns&Medicaid.pdf

Tool for improving community health

Cool new resource

The Prevention Institute offers a new resource -- THRIVE, a web-based tool to help communities identify and support factors that improve community health and reduce disparities. Includes a guide to using the tool in your community, to think through the planning process and potential partners.

THRIVE
http://www.preventioninstitute.org/thrive/index.php

Bilingual schools: tips for success

New report

Successful Bilingual Schools looks at six elementary schools in San Diego, LA, and Ventura counties with successful bilingual education programs (despite poverty and students' limited English skills). The report identifies key features that contribute to success -- leadership, accountability, teacher qualifications, and professional development.

Successful Bilingual Schools
http://www.sdcoe.net/lret2/els/pdf/SBS_Report_FINAL.pdf

Health info for early care and education teachers and providers

New curriculum resource

Child Care Health Linkages Project, part of the California Child Care Health Program at UCSF, offers a new resource -- Curriculum and Resources for Child Care Health Advocates. The 18-module curriculum has info about health and safety for early care and education teachers and providers and tips for working with child care health consultants. Available in English and Spanish. Instructor's guide also available. Free to download or $80 for each language (and $30 more for the instructor's guide)

Curriculum and Reources for Child Care Health Advocates
Curriculum: http://ucsfchildcarehealth.org/html/pandr/trainingcurrmain.htm#ccha
Instructor's guide: http://ucsfchildcarehealth.org/html/pandr/trainingcurrmain.htm#ig

Child welfare terms in Spanish

New resource

It can be challenging to translate technical terms about issues affecting kids (esp child welfare services!) into Spanish, so this reference from the Child Welfare Information Gateway (part of the US Dept of Health and Human Services) looks very handy:

Child Welfare Terms, English to Spanish
http://www.childwelfare.gov/glossary/
terms_english_spanish_a-b.cfm

Lower pay for moms

Everyday Outrages Department

If you're a woman, on average, becoming a mother will cost you 17 cents off every dollar in your paycheck. If you're a man, your pay is likely to increase when you become a father.
?!?!@#?!??@#!
We all know there's a "wage gap" between women and men. But now a bunch of studies have shown that women with kids also get paid less than women without kids. One study, for example, found that women without children make 90 cents to a man's dollar. Moms make 73 cents, and single moms make 56 to 66 cents.
Oh, but it's because they take more time off when kids are sick etc., right? Wrong. A Cornell University researcher, Shelley Correll, released a study last year showing that the cause is discrimination. It's not mothers' "fault" for doing delinquent things like taking care of their kids.
Correll also found that mothers were less likely to be hired than non-mothers and were offered lower starting pay. (She figured this out by comparing the hiring experiences of equally qualified moms and non-moms.)
This discrimination is the latest target of an organization called MomsRising, an internet activism group trying to drum up political pressure for "family friendly" policies in the U.S. They've published The Motherhood Manifesto, which documents problems and proposes solutions on a wide range of issues from work policies to child care to health and more.
Lower pay for moms hurts kids! MomsRising quotes a researcher at the Institute for Women's Policy Research, who says that if this pay gap didn't exist, the poverty rate would be cut in half for single-mother families and the poverty rates for dual-earner families would be cut by 25%.
To see the solutions MomsRising is proposing for this and other problems, check them out at www.momsrising.org.
Jean

Ending child poverty

What a Concept! Department

Did you know that Great Britain has an official policy of ending child poverty by 2020? This was adopted seven years ago by the Tony Blair government and has already led to a drop of 17% in child poverty. That was less than their target of 25% -- but the government has vowed to try harder.
Advocates say that the main benefit of this policy is that it “focuses the minds of the politicians” on this problem, which, as you know, is at the root of a lot of the other problems children face, in health, school success, mental health, etc. Some of the things the Brits are doing to end child poverty are:
· a system of subsidies to low-wage earners
· continuing increases in the minimum wage so it keeps up with inflation (like the measure Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed this year)
· a 10-year national child care strategy to help parents access affordable, high-quality child care (so they can hold down a job)
· programs for healthy development of preschoolers, teens, and young adults.
Could we adopt a policy like this here? Probably depends on how hard we push………..
Jean
(article on this at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/
2006/04/02/AR2006040201091.html)

Birth of a Blog

The Children’s Advocate is giving birth to a blog! This newest member of our family will be a place for new resources (studies, reports, materials, etc), news, model programs, advocacy campaigns, and other interesting stuff that appears on our radar screen, along with our two cents on what it all means. You can respond with comments and soon you’ll be able to look up past posts by topic. We hope to hear from you!
Jean and Jessine